Strike at the core

Bangalore police and intelligence services deserve kudos for the arrest of Mohammed Raiz-ur Rehman, head of LeT operations in south India within a week of the December 28, 2004, attack on Bangalore?s prestigious Indian Institute of Science.

Bangalore police and intelligence services deserve kudos for the arrest of Mohammed Raiz-ur Rehman, head of LeT operations in south India within a week of the December 28, 2004, attack on Bangalore’s prestigious Indian Institute of Science that killed a retired IIT (Delhi) professor M.C. Puri and injured several others. Although there is yet no evidence of the role Rehman may have played, he is suspected of having planned and funded the attack. North and west India have long been wracked by jehadi violence. The spread of these activities to the south is a clear matter of worry. But the pattern that is visible here is in keeping with the trend identified by analysts across the world — strikes against targets that affect a country’s economy. Hence, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai, India’s IT hub, become focus cities to hit, just as the World Trade Tower was on 9/11.

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What is worrisome, however, is that the links in the chain that is becoming visible stretch to Bangladesh and the Saudi peninsula, rather than familiar Pakistan. A matter of some concern is the fact that the peace process with Pakistan seems to be having little impact on the expansion of terrorism across India. While there are few doubts that the prime mover in Islamic terrorism across the country remains Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, there are disturbing signs that many of the groups that are involved in violent acts have been functioning autonomously. The group in Hyderabad that was involved in the attack on the office of the Special Task Force, or more recently planning strikes against Hitec city, have either been home-grown, or have links to Bangladesh. The situation there is most alarming. There should be few doubts in any mind that if another Osama bin Laden were to emerge, he would do so from Bangladesh.